National Capital Network of Sculptors

Hanging a Sculpture on Your Wall? Of Course You Can                                                                      by Line Labrecque

If you ever shied away from sculptures for your home because you think they are just for window sills and tabletops, think again. There is a wide variety of hanging wall sculptures made from a range of materials and mediums. A wall sculpture can add dimensions and texture that 2 dimensional paintings cannot.

When choosing your piece, you need to consider its weight and size and the wall you have planned for it. Is the wall plaster, drywall or wood? Is it cement or metal? Is your piece made of lightweight materials? Depending on the medium of the sculpture, you will it need to be supported for its inherent weight? With a little research you can easily hang a lightweight or heavy sculpture on your wall. The right sculpture can transform a room. Whether you are looking for something that will relax or invigorate your living space, wall sculpture are a wonderful choice.

When looking for something to decorate your home, think of a wall sculpture as a painting that delivers just that much more.

DIMENSIONS 2016 will be the largest collection of sculptures in a single exhibit in the Ottawa area. The 18th Annual Exhibit is taking place October 20-23 at Lansdowne Park in the Horticulture Building. Check out over 110 sculptures in a variety of mediums including live ephemeral sculpture, presentations and demonstrations by renowned artists.  Don’t forget to drop into our exclusive sculptural gift shop where part of the proceeds go to support the Boys and Girls Club.

Above left, Wood Sculpture by Jim Lawrence                                                              Above right, Lean on Me by Hengameh Kamal-Rad                                               Bottom right, Into Nature 2 by Edna Lemyre

The trick to choosing the right place for your sculpture is to think about the function of the space before the design. A sculpture could look great in the center of a room but if it’s a room that people are always walking through then it may not be efficient to have the sculpture blocking the way. When you choose the right space, you’ll be able to make the other design elements like colour and lighting work around it.

A window sill is a terrific place to display an entire collection of small sculptures. This one is ideal because it is a large window with a narrow window sill that isn’t functional for much beyond just showcasing your stuff. The light coming through the window highlights the different pieces and creates a great gallery area for your display.

Around the fireplace is a terrific place to add sculptures since this is a place that we typically use to show off our beloved objects. Most people will put their sculptures on the mantle but an option is a bench or low table in front of the fire. It gives more depth to the entire space. Make sure that your sculptures aren’t made of a material that will be harmed by the heat. Another idea is to display sculptures around the mantle. In this case, the sculptures are set off to the side of the fireplace on the floor. You can use pedestals or tables on either side of the fireplace as well. This is great in rooms where you want to make sculptures visible but keep them out of the way of foot traffic.

Another great example of how to keep sculptures out of the way but still on display, use your corners. Corners are a splendid place to display tall sculptures that can be set on the floor.

If you are interested in adding sculpture to your art collection, don’t forget to mark your calendar for our 18^th annual sculpture exhibit – DIMENSIONS 2016. October 20-23, in the Horticulture Building at Lansdowne Park.

Excerpts from Houzz.com 2009

The National Capital Network of Sculptors is offering some insight into sculpture appreciation in this new blog post called Sculpture Lovers. Have you been out to a gallery and loved a sculpture, but wondered how you could place it into your home to its best advantage?  The next few weeks we will be showing you some of the ways that other art lovers present their work.  Don’t forget to mark your calendars and come browse the fine collection of over 100 works at our 18th annual Sculpture Exhibit, DIMENSIONS. It’s taking place at Lansdowne Park’s Horticultural Building, October 20th to 23rd. 

Mary Ceruti of the SculptureCenter  offers her perspective into this world in today’s bog post, an excerpt of an interview by Andrew Goldstein.

What should one take into consideration when regarding a piece of sculpture?
You should walk around it, of course, and see it in a 360-degree context. Then you should think about how it relates to the ground and the space around it—that’s always an issue for a sculptor. The other thing that I think is great about sculpture and that I think is important when you’re collecting sculpture on a smaller scale—things that can fit on a table, or a shelf—is the fact that you can pick it up and hold it, and it has weight. It’s an amazing thing. For instance, Ugo Rondinone‘s cast-bronze apple is painted very realistically, so that when you apprehend it you absolutely mistake it for an apple. But it’s cast in bronze and it’s filled with lead—it weighs so much more than you would expect, so it’s a very strange experience when you pick it up. This kind of haptic experience is something that only sculpture offers you, and only the collector gets to experience the piece in that way.

What are some of the ways that people live with sculpture? How do they incorporate sculpture into their homes, and into their lives?
It’s as simple as putting a sculpture on your side table, or a piece in a fireplace, so that almost everywhere you look there is something unusual. Like putting a sculpture in the entrance hall so that when people come in they encounter it. I’ve seen the whole gamut, and it’s only limited by the collector’s ambition and imagination.

Would you recommend that people buy sculpture when they are considering building a collection?
Absolutely. The only reason someone who is really interested in contemporary art wouldn’t collect sculpture is because they have some prejudice about how much space they have, which I think they could get over. Since the field of sculpture has expanded to engage almost all the other media, it’s so much a part of the contemporary art discourse that to ignore it is to ignore a vast part of what contemporary art is about. You can’t really avoid it.

In a funny way, that puts a positive spin on Barnett Newman’s famous quote that “sculpture is what you bump into when you back up to see a painting.”

It’s true—it’s unavoidable! And that’s not a bad thing.